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Topic: Doom Eternal (Read 4009 times)

Thankfully it's nowhere near as bad as its opening hours and I settled into the running and gunning after a bit. It has reliably chiseled off 30 minutes of boring locked down life a day for the last few weeks. But arghhh it's just so overstuffed and daft.

Like I started off moaning it's so bad at teaching you how anything works. I turned off the tutorial screens as they were 1) boring 2) take the fun out of figuring out new enemies 3) badly written 4) written in the world's tiniest font, but this fucked me, for example, when I couldn't figure out how to break walls underwater as it turns out this is explained in a tutorial screen, fucksake.

So much of it just went over my head. Did it really need three different upgrade systems? (I don't think I used a single weapon mod in the entire thing apart from the rifle scope.) Did it really need a hub world? Did it really need all those cut scenes? It feels like there are only about nine or ten power-ups in the whole game (is there even a quad damage?) and every time I picked one up I had no idea what it was.

So many annoying, niggly bits of bad design. The timed enemy encounters for example - they're really hard to beat on your first attempt, but when you fail them the game acts like you're just going to carry on having failed them, with reduced health and ammo and the prize lost. The only way to try again is to reload a checkpoint which is usually miles/several monsters beforehand.

Other gripes: The redesigned HUD does its level best to obscure useful info, like how much fuel your chainsaw has. This is especially shit if you need to chop up a heavy and can't tell if that's even possible;

I've finished the fucking game and I genuinely couldn't tell you what all the bits of the HUD describe. I got through the whole thing just hoping for the best every time I tried to use the flamethrower, chainsaw or a grenade.

It's especially odd because Doom 2016 was so refreshingly direct and minimal and unpretentious. Well, at least I think it was - it still had too many weapon mods but I think other than that it was pretty svelte wasn't it? I finished it on hard, which to me is an amazing feat - not to have finished it on hard but that the game got me to actually play it on hard at all - I haven't actively sought out extra challenge in a game since I was 17 years old, it made me feel young and alive. Whereas Doom Eternal makes me feel like a confused, frightened old man.

I can't work out what they were going for. They seem to have tried to go further with the retro thing to almost contrarian levels, with the weapons as floating spinning power-ups, but retro to what era exactly? The pools of toxic water remind me of PS2 level design. There's some Xbox Ninja Gaiden in there too, and Devil May Cry.

It is very peculiar. Against all odds, and against current trends Doom 2016 nailed what people wanted from a Doom game, and showed there was demand for something like this.

So then for the sequel they massively change things up and go for a game that feels very different. (Albeit with some shared mechanics in the glory kills.) My own fault really for not waiting and reading more, but I assumed this would be a slight iteration on the formula that worked so well before.

I think Doom 2016 had a lot of "retro" elements in that it resurrects old (ie pre-Half-Life) ideas of FPS design, ideas that had been dead or de-emphasised for the previous 20 years. A focus on combat over exploration, zero narrative, armour points, non-recharging health, levels split into separate missions, secret rooms that explicitly call themselves secret rooms, floating power-ups, quad damage etc. A return to the shooting gallery kind of experience rather than the "immersive" kind of experience.

In Doom Eternal they took that further in a few areas, like the weapons now being floating spinning weapons, and adding 1-Ups. But I think the actual level design is sort of retro now too, but in a way I can't put my finger on. Like I said, swimming in pools of toxic water as your health depletes feels old-school to me, and some of the more gothic and less hellish environments - ie the levels that are grey and green instead of brown and red - remind me of... I can't put my finger on it, but something PS2-y or Xboxy?

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So then for the sequel they massively change things up and go for a game that feels very different. (Albeit with some shared mechanics in the glory kills.) My own fault really, but I assumed this would be a slight iteration on the formula that worked so well before.

Doom 2016 is definitely a game I was actually hungry for more of the same of, which again is quite unlike me, I'm usually bored very quickly. In fact it might have been appropriate if they just released a quick sequel in 18 months, with a couple of new weapons and enemies, like Doom 2. But I suppose it's good they tried something different instead. I just didn't think it worked nearly as well.

So then for the sequel they massively change things up and go for a game that feels very different. (Albeit with some shared mechanics in the glory kills.) My own fault really for not waiting and reading more, but I assumed this would be a slight iteration on the formula that worked so well before.

I wouldn't say it feels much different. It's just Doom 2016, but with extra stuff cluttering up the experience. I'd describe it as rebalanced, or, less charitably, debalanced.

And I don't care what anyone says; the Marauders can fuck right off. Angry traffic light cunts.

And I don't care what anyone says; the Marauders can fuck right off. Angry traffic light cunts.

Couldn't work out how I felt about those guys. I found them quite good fun on their own, but when they spawn among a horde of other bastards you're trying to manage they're fucking annoying. Also the fact that the one-hit-kill lightsaber doesn't work on them is a big fuck-you.

Couldn't work out how I felt about those guys. I found them quite good fun on their own, but when they spawn among a horde of other bastards you're trying to manage they're fucking annoying. Also the fact that the one-hit-kill lightsaber doesn't work on them is a big fuck-you.

At best they're just a bit boring - stand around waiting for their eyes to flash green, so you can chip away a little bit of their stupidly large health bar. At worst, they're a bloody piss take - turning up, without warning, in the middle of an already hectic battle, being all invulnerable and lobbing dogs at you.

Having finished the game (in an effort that made Sisyphus look sissified) I still can't make my mind up about it. I'm not a fan of this fad for difficult games. Getting stuck on a section for half an hour doesn't make it more rewarding when I finally scrape through. Fans/Stockholm syndrome victims of it would probably trot out the old "It's tough, but fair" defence, but I'm not convinced it is - not when the action is so overwhelming and the margin for error so narrow.

Admittedly, I have the reaction speed of a drunken sloth. I can accept that someone with a normally functioning brain might find the chaos more enjoyable. And it's at least merciful enough to let you change the difficulty whenever you want. I'm not too proud to say that I played a lot of the game on easy and it was a heck of a lot more fun that way.

On the other hand, some of the changes are for the better. Despite having complained about the enemy weakpoints system, I like the increased emphasis on choosing the right gun for each monster. That's when the combat chess concept works best. In Doom 4, the choice tended to feel kind of arbitrary and I'd usually stick with a gun until it ran out of ammo, then switch to the next and repeat. Also, while I find the range of new combat options a bit bewildering, it is nonetheless quite satisfying to fire burp a big group of baddies and blast them into a fountain of armour shards. One of the only times the new mechanics really clicked for me, in a game changer sort of way, was when I realised that armour now soaks up all damage, making it more effective than glory kills at replenishing your health (especially since I frequently gib baddies by accident).

On the other hand, some of the changes are for the better. Despite having complained about the enemy weakpoints system, I like the increased emphasis on choosing the right gun for each monster.

I can't actually think of examples of that, maybe it's another thing I missed. I tended to use the rocket launcher for big guys, plasma for shield guys, and then whatever came to hand for whatever else, with the super shotgun as the default. Occasionally sniped some weak points before waging into a fight. Hmm, maybe I'm answering my own question?

Also, while I find the range of new combat options a bit bewildering, it is nonetheless quite satisfying to fire burp a big group of baddies and blast them into a fountain of armour shards.

Yes, that is satisfying and works well. The problem is that it took me several hours of gameplay to figure out how it works. This is the kind of thing I was complaining about at the start of the thread - it's a weird, counter-intuitive idea ("you can use a backup flamethrower to set enemies on fire and collect armour shards", what?) that's hard to learn. It definitely works mechanically once you get used to it, and it's really fun, but it's just so... weird?

I suppose you might say the glory kill idea is also weird, but I think there's only so many weird systems can cram into one game really. It all comes at the cost of the dreaded cognitive load.

That's the thing, I can buy into glory kills to get health back, it makes a kind of sense, it's like your a vampire or something And you'll intuitively use it anyway. Same with the chainsaw, you're running out of ammo so you use the chainsaw. But Flamethrower to get armour back??? What the fuck are you talking about that's just stupid. Does the flame chip off their armour? How does that work?

It's no more bizarre than using the chainsaw to get ammo. As noted, the game goes all in on being a game (which makes it all the weirder that it also tries to go heavy on plot). I think if the game had stuck to those three mechanics, it would have been a lot more manageable, but the devs piled on a load of other straws and now the camel's a quadriplegic. Oftentimes after losing a fight, I'd wonder what I did wrong and fail to come up with an answer: In that nanosecond that everything went wrong, what should I have done differently? Ice grenade? Blood punch? Were either of those even an option at the time? Checking the HUD would probably have got me killed anyway.

I reckon a bit of streamlining would have helped a lot. Have rid of grenades and blood punch entirely. In fact, get rid of normal punching too, since it's useless anyway. Let the lightsabre take the place of the bloodpunch as your mega powerful melee attack. You already use the flame belch for gathering armour, so why not have it also knock the armour off baddies like the pinky and cyber mancubus? Instead of ice grenades, maybe burning enemies also causes them to stop drop and roll. Maybe it shares fuel with the chainsaw, or you build up fuel with glory kills (because demons have petrol for blood, or something).